Look Wut I Did!

I've been on quite the domesticity kick lately. I'm quite impressed with myself! Honestly - I decided to take President Uchtdorf's talk to heart and get happy. Here's a smackling of what I've been up to...

Apple Sauce
My next door neighbor - Debbie - and I put up ~80 pounds of apples this year! We got ~48 quarts. I kept ~3 doz small macs (because I'll repeatedly tell you that this is the BEST type for applesauce) so that I can make carmel apples in the next couple of weeks. ~~At this point of my tome, if you can't tell that I love tildas, then you are missing something~~ This involves homemade carmel - not the kind you peel off the wrapper and melt. It's been very hard carmel in the past, so I'm anxious to see if I can make it better this year.

This photo is of the 2nd batch. The pink variety was created using apples from the Payson, Utah area (which were picked up by my incredible mom). The tan bottle was created using the last of the macs that my amazing niece, Natasha, picked up for me in the Logan area. Amazing to see the color difference, huh? The pink tint is what prevents some of my other nieces (I won't mention Courtney by name ;) ) from tasting this scrumptious treat.


Scout Shadow Box

Carson recently finished up Cub Scouts, and I had been collecting his miscellaneous scout paraphanalia in ziploc bags around the house. He asked me if I was going to do anything with all of the stuff, and it seemed so wrong to just toss it out. My local Hobby Lobby was having a 50% off sale on frames, so I picked this up for a mere $6.50! I found the cubscout paper at Roberts, and I raced home to put it all together. I'm still missing his compass points, but I think I saw them in the laundry room this morning...

Halloween Costume I'm not going to post a photo of this yet, but it'll show up in a couple of weeks. One of my favorite things to do is shop, so when Halloween costume ideas come up, I'm all about getting out there. I don't want to give too much away right now, but I found a leather jacket for $6 at Savers for Evan, and I sewed a down~right~fabulous cape using no pattern and 12" wide strips of two different types of black fabric for Carson. Griff's costume only requires the addition of ears to a past costume. Thank goodness for that costume box in the basement! Get this - Griff isn't even being the same Star Wars character that Carson used the costume for in the first place. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!

Night Stand
Cory and Shannon gave me this night stand a few years ago. I've used the dickens out of it, but it was very unspectacular. Design Sponge has a weekly post of Before & After projects. I got to thinking about that little underappreciated night stand, and I was inspired!

Luckily you can't read the titles of the books in that little travel case. I don't think you need to know what type of smut may find it's way into my to-be-read pile. Actually ~ there isn't any smut there ~ just some of the futuristic sci-fi romance that I decided to try. It wasn't that great...

I forgot to take before photos, but you can see that the after is pretty dang adorable. I took a pillow sham from my new bed ensemble (which sprung my next project ~ pillows and window treatments from coordinating fabric ~ also found at Hobby Lobby) to Home Depot and had them match the paint color to one of the stripes. I also picked out a lovely, simple drawer pull. It took me a full evening to sand the thing down (I was also able to keep Griffin busy that morning by handing him a sanding sponge and telling him to have at it while I did a conference call for work ~ FABULOUS!).

I rolled the entire thing ~ this went against the advice of my professional painting hubby, but I can't paint with a brush for anything. A 4" roller worked just fine, thanks... OK - so I thought I'd done an all right job on the dental trim, but this photo reveals otherwise. Looks like I'm off to find a small paintbrush and do some touchups.

ANYWAY - I'm so in love with this little piece that I picked up an end table at DI for $10 and have started sanding it down. The problem with this one? The drawer pull is a 2-1/2" center instead of the standard 3". Not an easy fix. I'm wondering what two knobs would look like... Never fear, I will find a solution ~ assuming I keep up the energy for more projects.